When I was in grade 6 (and 3 and 5) I was deathly afraid of grade 11. When the time came, I wondered, how could I possibly be ready for it? How could I possibly know what I would need to know in order to not be seen as stupid? I had a similar moment of fear recently around getting older. Afraid that one day I would wake up and realize I’m 55. As if the way it will happen is I will be plucked out of one reality and dropped into another. As if I’ll be dropped into 63 with the same knowledge and life experiences as 32. As if time won’t slowly have its way with me like a river on a stone, readying, smoothing, changing me at each new step along the way. Sometimes these fears come to me when I stay up too late and have let my mind wander a little too much. When all of the distractions of the day are no longer present, it can be as if I’m seeing something I’m not cleared to be seeing just yet, or ever.
When I take all that I am familiar with away, all that I know to touch as a way of identifying myself as myself, I feel that same fear. That free-floating, confusing, everything is liquid feeling. This is the feeling travel creates in me. I suppose this is the reason I realized I needed to force myself to do it -- in order to become more comfortable with that feeling. To remind myself over and over again, until no reminder is necessary, that I am not my home, my job, my body, my social media presence, or how others see me. I am not my accomplishments nor my failures. I am not my relationship to the people or things in my life. I am not anything that I can touch, nor everything that I keep pointing to to say, “Look! That’s me! I exist! I’m real!” Yes, I am. But not as evidenced by any of those things.
The hardest part of meditation for me is realizing that ‘I’ have no place in it. My brain tries to give me the lesson, tries to make sense of the problem I’m muddling through, tries to analyze and identify and course correct the issue. But the whole point is to let that ‘I’ go. Let what is not ‘I’ come forward out of the murkiness that is my over-active brain that is always reaching for greatness. To know and allow absence, that is the feeling I get when I travel, a lack of identity and that is the part I am constantly fighting in meditation. That letting go, releasing my grip, allowing my lack of control space to roam.
I’m not good at it. My past partners, anyone who’s been inside my apartment, all can attest: I like control. It makes me good at what I do for a living, it makes me good at my art, it makes me reliable.
And.
It also limits me. It means that I can only go so far as I can imagine. When I released my book, when I threw the launch party, when I hired the musicians, designed the cover and the promo posters, envisioned the venue: it all came true. To the very last detail on the night of, it was the complete embodiment of my deepest hope and desire for that night, no more and no less. I’ve always felt a little conflicted about this, but now I understand that I never left room for magic, unknown, possibility. My grip was tight and the evening was perfect. In my mind, my value as a person was wrapped up in that night, so I left no room for anything but my vision. I prayed, I acknowledged that I didn’t get to determine the outcome, but everything that was in my control I cemented into place.
I didn’t come to Bali expecting magic. I didn’t come expecting a ‘fix.’ I couldn’t identify a tangible problem, so I didn’t think that was what I needed or was looking for. I came with uncertainty, curiosity, mild fear and sure, some hope.
More than five years ago, someone recommended Michael A. Singer’s “The Untethered Soul” to me but at the time, I wasn’t ready for it. I started it but didn’t finish it and don’t remember it being impressive. This time, it was recommended to me by a medical practitioner who believed some of my physical pain was the result of possible spiritual and/or emotional blockages. He recommended The Untethered Soul as a course of treatment for my time in Bali. Having just finished it I can say I feel as if I have been stumbling around blindly with my hands out feeling the edges of something I didn’t have a vocabulary for.
I’ve been feeling out the spaces underneath all of the words we use each day, in every conversation, wondering, “What are we not talking about, right now?” All of the feelings and emotional reactions I have to internal and external events, I have an inkling that this, whatever I have given weight and meaning and value to, isn’t actually what’s real or important, just a really believable mirage. I liken what I’ve been going through to being sightless with my hands out feeling this rough, course brick wall but up until this moment having no experience with bricks or walls.
It was like I needed permission to let go of the belief that anything (nevermind everything) was up to me, permission that it was ok to be happy and ok to trust. Up until now I have been living with the safety on. Living with one foot always on the earth with the hopes that I’m hedging my bets, saying to the universe, “I don’t fully believe. I’m not expecting beauty or magic or blessings. I’m already expecting the worst, so you may as well just leave me alone.” This was my way of protecting myself. I was the best at noticing the worst parts of any situation, of getting caught up in minor dramas, perversely hoping that if I never got too excited, too engaged, too distracted by joy, then I’d always see what was about to hit me. This way I’d always be ready for the fall, the impending blindside, I would never be ‘knock overable.’
I have such a capacity for joy that I’ve been keeping under wraps since the very first childhood heartbreak, the very first, “Oh, this is what life is really like.” I didn’t understand there was cruelty before then and I’ve never allowed myself to be shocked again. I showed my heart but only in situations where I had the upper hand, where I was in complete control (see: the stage). I gave my heart away, but only to the unavailable so the pain was always predictable, understandable, controlled.
A friend was crying in front of me, mourning the sad circumstances that had befallen her close friend and I realized, “I no longer love like this.” I no longer let others close enough to me that would allow me to be hurt as badly as she is hurting right now. I can remember when I did, even as an adult I’ve had times when I would cry for the pain of those I loved. And then one day, I suppose after deeming it to be too much, I shut down. I decided to stop loving in that way if loving meant always hurting that badly. I am safe always and as a result perpetually just the slightest bit numb.
Today, as I finished the last pages of Singer’s book I felt such relief. Like my heart was finally allowed to say, “You see? I knew there was something beneath it all.” It showed me that there is a way to living wholly without being debilitated by the oceans of sadness that have always gone along with it for me. I am in awe of those past 12 who have continued to live with their hearts available. Who see joy and beauty and then proceed to talk about it and the feelings it gives them openly, wholly revealing where (in my mind) they are now vulnerable, the spots in myself that I believed would give the world an opportunity to hurt me.
I have been dying to let go but far too afraid of the consequences of doing so. I’m not lazy, I’m not weak, I’m not even cowardly, but this was too big. This, living with openness, acceptance, faith -- that was and has been beyond me. I said that I would never be hurt again, and, truthfully, I’ve come pretty close to that. The pain I’ve experienced has almost always been that of my own causation. I’ve hardly ever allowed enough vulnerability with another for them to hurt me without me being in the driver's seat.
The book, The Untethered Soul, is based on the premise that joy comes and is only possible when you accept everything as it is, when you no longer fight right now; and when you can do that, you can know unconditional love, or, God. When you see your true self as the witness of all of the thoughts and feelings and emotions, when you are able to see internal as well as external events as equal in their relevance on your happiness, then you will be able to be happy regardless of circumstances.
I know that I have dipped my toes into The Divine at a couple of points in the past couple of years, but I didn’t know how to make sense of it, how to discuss it, so instead I have been dancing around it. I’ve wanted teachers, but at the same time am generally suspicious of anyone suggesting they have Knowledge.
This trip has been opportunity after opportunity to test my capacity to accept the moment, accept the inconveniences, test my commitment to keeping my heart open in the face of frustrating, uncontrollable circumstances. When my departing flights were delayed, when everyone in line with me was swearing, frustrated, cruel to the airline staff, I had the legitimate thought, do they know something I don’t? Am I the naive one who is acting inappropriately right now? Will something be gained if I get upset? I felt genuinely uncertain, unsure which direction I should let myself swing, so instead I kind of just held in the balance of not knowing, not really full of faith and not going fully towards my fear, just sort of uncertain and uncomfortable as I watched and hoped I was doing the right thing by not getting upset.
When I fell down on a hike alone early in the morning on my third day here, when I felt my ankle go 90 degrees, when the pain shot straight to my brain, straight to my eyes, I had a moment where I thought, “This is just pain, this is just sensation, you could choose to breathe and watch it,” but that time I could not manage my fear. I was unable to just witness my thoughts instead of getting carried away and identifying with them. I thought (subconsciously) that my fear was necessary to being saved, to receiving help. I couldn’t stay centred in that moment, my fear won.
I have had other successes though, when I got sick and needed antibiotics, when Apple was sending a code to a phone locked in a drawer in Canada that was needed to unlock my phone in Bali, when my bank froze my credit and debit cards assuming the Indonesian purchases were fraudulent, when my phone was still locked to my current cell phone provider and wouldn’t accept foreign SIM cards, when I got sick again and needed more antibiotics -- it usually took a breath, my instincts were always to get upset, to blame someone, to assume things should be other than how they were. But each time, I got quicker and quicker to remember to ask: why? Why do I think things should be other than how they are? Why do I think my happiness is dependent upon the world doing what I think and want it to do?
Sometimes I am surprised by what my life looks like, it doesn’t look the way I always thought it would. One thing that keeps me moving forward is trusting that even when I am not entirely certain why I am where I am, I know firmly that at no point did I take a left turn when I was supposed to go straight. I may have held in place a little longer than I should have at times, but I have never been able to make what’s wrong feel right for very long. This comforts me when I’ve stayed up too late and I’m imagining my hands being those of a much older woman and all that I don’t know yet. As does a book that provides a language to an age-old code I didn’t realize I was trying to crack all by myself, refusing to allow the possibility that great minds have gone on ahead of me and are willing to offer small nuggets of wisdom if I’m willing to open my palms, my eyes, my heart. Meditation, the privilege of travel, discomfort in all of its forms, I am attempting to open myself to all the empty space, all of the lack of certainty, all of the letting go necessary to make the most of every lesson. Basically, what I am trying to realize in all of my distraction and all of my blindness, is what I am not. The hope is that if I accept everything, I will be ready for anything, and then, I will be what we’re all after: free.
Comments
Post a Comment